


the sun (in his smile)

by phylocalist



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: (is that like. a thing. idk what else to tag it as sorry), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Car Accidents, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Minor Character Death, Original Character Death(s), Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Soulmarks, light gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 09:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21407959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phylocalist/pseuds/phylocalist
Summary: “You’re my soulmate,” the stranger says, voice soft and warm and like everything Gerard ever wanted but had long given up on. His eyes are sparkling and his smile is blinding.He’s perfect.And nothing Gerard deserves an ounce of.
Relationships: Frank Iero/Gerard Way
Comments: 7
Kudos: 89





	the sun (in his smile)

**Author's Note:**

> mcr is back from the dead and so is my frerard ass
> 
> the original prompt for this was "soulmates + eagerness" but i had to twist it and make it so fucking angsty somehow?? idk why?? but yeah. much angst. happy/hopeful ending tho bc i _can't_ not write a happy ending.
> 
> fic is unbeta'd.

“It’s you!” A voice yells excitedly at the same time an arm is shoved right on Gerard’s face.

He startles, his hands almost dropping the bouquet he’s preparing for this exact client, but he catches himself just in time. With a silent sigh of relief, Gerard looks up dubiously at the arm that’s stretched in front of him, the exposed wrist that the client is so fervently pointing at. He’s almost too confused, too caught off-guard to notice, but then his eyes zero-in on the point the client’s pointing at and everything starts spinning.

Gerard feels his grip on the bouquet start to slip again and he swallows, gripping it so tight he might be crushing the stems of the flowers between his hands.

“Excuse me?” He manages to croak out through the tightness in his throat. He knows exactly what he’s being told about, knows exactly what this stranger is pointing at, but Gerard can’t let himself _ hope_. Not again.

He tries to covertly turn his wrists so the stranger can’t see them anymore, but he gets caught red-handed. The stranger takes one of his wrists in his hand and pulls it up towards his own, pushing them one against the other. Gerard has no strength left in him to fight him, not when he’s smiling so fervently.

Gerard watches as the stranger traces the ragged edges of the half five-pointed sailor star on his wrist—his soulmark—surely confirming what he’d discovered earlier: the soulmark on his own wrist, with its own ragged edges cutting it in half, fits perfectly against Gerard’s.

“You’re my soulmate,” the stranger says, voice soft and warm and like everything Gerard ever wanted but had long given up on. His eyes are sparkling and his smile is blinding.

He’s perfect.

And nothing Gerard deserves an ounce of.

*

Gerard had been born with a soulmark. Not everyone was born with one—some people didn’t get theirs until a few years into their childhood and the majority of the population didn’t even get one. It was a rarity, a luxury, a sign of good luck and a prosperous life to come.

His family had celebrated, always reminding him that he needed to be good and grow up healthy and kind for his soulmate. He was the first of their family to ever get a soulmark, after all. In their eyes, it was the biggest event of their generation and it felt like fortune had smiled down upon the Ways.

It turned out to be anything but.

Gerard’s soulmark had been pretty, yet simple. Elegant, one might call it. It was a sun, its rays extending outwards in filigree curves, the center a hollow circle. It looked like a fresh tattoo, stark black against the pale of his fair skin.

He used to spend days admiring it, thinking of the other person who had the same soulmark on their wrist. Who would they be, how would they be? Would they like the same things he did, or would they introduce Gerard to new and exciting things? Would they be taller or shorter than him—or maybe they’d be the same height, signaling further that they were made to be one half of each other.

It had been fun daydreaming. For years, it was what had sustained Gerard through the rough roads he’d had to walk down during his teenage and young adult years. Even when everything went wrong, when the world dimmed around him to a dark and scary place, the sun was always on his wrist smiling up at him. And the sun—his _ real _ sun—was out there too, waiting for him to find them.

And then, he’d fallen down a hole he couldn’t crawl out of. 

It had been a terrible night and nothing was working, so he kept downing pills and alcohol, hoping it would all go away—or that _ he _ would go away. Either outcome was fine, as long as it _ stopped_.

He had walked home from a friend’s house, tripping on his own feet more often than he took steps forward. Everything was spinning anyway, it wasn’t like he _ could _ take any steady steps even if he tried. The floor was definitely moving like it was lava.

He took a swig of the bottle in his hand. The whiskey burned as it slid down his throat and he winced, taking a step forward and instead tripping again. He fell this time, bare hands and knees scraping against the asphalt. It stung like a bitch.

“Ah, fuck,” he swore, absentmindedly looking at one of his palms. It was scratched and slightly bloody. His knees were probably just as bad.

Gerard was trying—very unsuccessfully—to get up from the ground, when car lights suddenly glared behind him and tires screeched. He instinctively curled up on the street, morbidly thinking that he was definitely going to get run over and scratched to a pulp right there onto the street, but then he heard a crash of metal against wood. He looked up far too fast, his head swimming for a few seconds, but he managed to make out the shape of a car that had clearly smashed right into a tree just off the sidewalk.

The car was smoking and Gerard could see the silhouette of someone slumping against the drivewheel. The sight managed to sober him up enough for him to finally get up, ignoring the sting of his knees and hands, and walk towards the car.

“Hey, dude, you okay?” He asked through the closed window once he reached the car, thumping weakly against it. He felt blood drip down his palm and over his wrist. His eyes tried to focus, but he was too far gone, his brain too muddled with drugs and alcohol to really be of any help.

Still, he somehow managed to get the driver’s door open. Once he had access to the person inside, he threw his arms around them and pulled as hard as he could, causing himself to trip backwards with the motion. The person followed and fell forwards on top of him, though, so Gerard counted it as a small victory.

“Yo,” Gerard said, poking the person’s arm, trying to get them to move off of him. “Dude, you’re heavy,” he wheezed, his lungs suffering under the person’s weight. He gripped the person’s sides as best he could with still-scratched up palms, and struggled to try to get them off. “Look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been—” His sentence was cut short as he hissed in pain. His hand had touched something that felt incredibly warm, and it felt like it burnt his exposed skin. What was this person even carrying that could do that?

As Gerard focused on what his hand was still wrapped around—because his brain had noticed that it hurt but hadn’t caught up enough to tell him to remove it—he uncurled his fingers from around a slender wrist. When his eyes caught sight of what had burnt him, it felt like he’d sobered up instantly.

On the inside of that wrist, stark black like a fresh tattoo and stained bloody from Gerard’s hands, was a soulmark in the shape of an intricate sun.

The same one that was etched into the skin of his own wrist.

Gerard swallowed, his world spinning further out of control than mere seconds before when he’d been high off of his mind. “Hey, no, this can’t be—,” he tried to get out, the words slipping from his mouth without his consent, and ignored the stinging in his hands as he manhandled the person onto a lying position on the ground.

They fell onto the asphalt with a _ thump_, and Gerard’s hands grabbed their face, parting the sticky strands of black hair to take a look at the face. He gulped as he opened their eyelids, frantic, looking for _ any _ sign of life.

But there was no breathing and, with horror, Gerard realized that his hands came back bright red, stained with much more blood than his own scratched-up palms could ever produce. His hands felt around the person’s skull, trying to find wherever the blood was coming from and find a way to stop it, but his fingers brushed against jagged edges and soft tissue and he took back his hand so fast it felt like his arm would break with the speed.

“You, you…” He wheezed, unable to find anything helpful to say or do. What was he even supposed to do? In a frenzy, he grabbed the person’s wrist again and pushed it against his own, the marks warming up as they came into contact. “This—you can’t _ die_, I only just found you!” He yelled, desperate, hot tears rolling down his cheeks.

But it was useless. He tried bringing up the wrist towards his face, feel the warmth that the soulmark emanated against his lips, but he stopped in horror as he watched the soulmark dissipate from the person’s wrist right in front of his eyes.

Gerard’s breath caught in his throat as he scrambled to look at his own wrist, where he knew his soulmark to be, only to find the skin empty. The only thing that remained, the only indication that _ anything _ had been there at all in the first place, was a very faint outline of a sun, like a faded scar.

He looked back at the person lying on the asphalt. A corpse.

Gerard had finally found his soulmate. And he had killed them.

*

Two years later, on his opposite wrist, a new mark had appeared.

*

His name is Frank, Gerard finds out. He works at the bakery down the street and he had left the flower shop with a promise ripped from Gerard to meet up again.

Gerard absolutely doesn’t want to meet up again. He can’t imagine anything good coming from them meeting up again, not after what had happened the one and only time he’d met his former soulmate. So he packs up early and closes the shop two hours before his usual closing time, walking with hurried steps to his apartment.

Frank doesn’t know where he lives, only knows where he works. He’s not so bad off that he can’t afford a few days off work, so he’s going to close the shop and hope for the best.

If this Frank has at least one functioning brain cell left, he’ll understand Gerard’s message and stop trying to meet him. 

It’s the least Gerard can do.

*

Two days later, Gerard opens the door of his apartment to a very smiley and very excited Frank.

For a second, he can’t help but think that Frank looks—and probably is—very much like an excitable puppy.

He recovers a second too late, and when he tries to close the door, something blocks it. Gerard looks down at the floor and finds one of Frank’s feet wedged between the door and the doorframe, effectively preventing it from being closed. Gerard looks back up at him, glaring this time, but Frank’s expression remains unchanged.

“You know Ray? Ray Toro?” Frank asks nonchalantly, like he isn’t completely invading Gerard’s privacy and possibly breaking some kinda law right now. The name does ring a bell, though, and Gerard scrunches up his nose. “He went to highschool with you. You guys played in a band together like, once,” Frank explains, then motions with his hands towards his head when he notices Gerard isn’t fully remembering yet. “Big afro.”

_ Ah_, Gerard thinks, suddenly remembering. Frank catches onto his reaction swiftly, and his smile seems to grow impossibly brighter.

“He works at the bakery too!” Frank says, all excitement and joy, like he’s breaking the best news of the year to Gerard. “He’s still friends with your brother, so they let me know where you lived.”

Gerard grips the side of the door in anger. _ Mikey, you fucking traitor. _

“What are you doing here?” Gerard barks out, trying the door again, but Frank’s foot is _ really _ wedged in there. There’s no way he’s going to be able to close the door like this.

“You said we’d meet up again, but you closed the flower shop for _ vacations_,” Frank says, pointedly looking at Gerard at the last word, his tone clearly accusing Gerard of lying. Gerard squares his shoulders, defensive. “Yet, you’re at home?”

“Maybe I take my vacations at home because I like to rest _ undisturbed_,” he emphasizes the last word, clearly suggesting that Frank should leave. Frank either doesn’t get the hint, or gets it and chooses to ignore it—which is much more likely.

“Then maybe I can show you a better way to have a vacation?” Frank says, and even though it’s a question, it’s also very clearly not. He wedges his foot even farther in, like he’s proving his point.

Gerard rolls his eyes and locks eyes with him, but whatever words he was coming up with in retort die on his throat as soon as he sees the look on Frank’s eyes. They’re mischievous, of course, because that seems to be the very core of him, but there’s a vulnerability there that startles Gerard. He falters for a moment, unsure for a second on if he should be the voice of reason here or give in, for once.

Before he can make a decision, though, Frank seizes the split second of vulnerability and pushes the door open and past Gerard into the apartment. He sprints towards Gerard’s couch and stands behind it and across from Gerard, clearly using it like a barrier between them.

“You can’t throw me out now, I’ll tell your brother,” he threatens, but his voice isn’t as sure or confident as it was before. Gerard can see his eyes roaming around the place, looking at everything with bright, curious eyes.

With a sigh, Gerard finally closes the door, resting his forehead on it for a few seconds before turning back towards Frank. He almost laughs at the sight of the short, tattooed punk cowering behind his couch like a puppy afraid to be kicked out, but catches it just in time. A huff still comes out between his lips, though, and Frank perks up at the sound.

He’s smiling again, and it’s almost shy this time, something Gerard would not have thought he could be. It’s infectious, and Gerard tries to hide his own smile behind his hand, but he knows he’s been caught when Frank’s just widens. It’s blindingly beautiful.

Unconsciously, Gerard’s hand goes to his wrist, blindly feeling over the place where he knows his second soulmark to be—the one he shares with Frank. Frank notices and mirrors him, tracing his fingers over his own mark, his eyes never leaving Gerard.

Gerard feels warmth emanate from his wrist, but it doesn’t burn him this time. It’s pleasant and it rolls over him the same way a gulp of coffee warms his body first thing in the morning. Across from him, Frank hums in contentment, and Gerard knows he can feel the warmth too.

Something inside Gerard breaks, yet pieces itself back together again at the same time.

He gives in.

(Maybe second chances are meant to be taken, after all.)

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me in the comments and/or also come yell at me (or watch me yell about mcr) over on **[twitter!](https://twitter.com/phylocalist)**


End file.
